In which Sid and Doris manage to check into another hotel with 24 minutes remaining on their 48 hour-valid antigen tests.
The day starts with the Tivoli Covid test team not turning up. But we have 48 hours on each test and the one we have expires at 14.50 today. So, if we get to Lagos in good time we can check in. Time enough to get breakfast where are many delights. First we offer this photo of the Liberdade which Sid estimates is from the early 1950s. There may be some American cars here but Sid is not the connoisseur.
Anyway, these were early entries for the conveyance of the day but soon trumped by the conveyor system apparently carrying Pastel da Nata, though we suspect the oven doesn’t actually link to the ceiling. Later we find the tricycle where The Silk seems have gone into the passenger trade, and that wins C of the D.
As you know Sid and Doris are keen birdspotters. Driving south towards Lagos we see storks and their nests but never at a time we can get a great picture (Doris’s one is the first picture, and some keen stork/pylon scientists contributed the second). A few of you know Doris’s strange interest in pylons, perhaps an extension of Eifell worship. Anyway, here we kill birds with stones, though there may be a happier phrase.
Having started on the motorway we look for quiet roads – this is the end of the really boring bit between the IC1 and the N120 that was all sandy soil and pine/eucalyptus trees. Later we find cows, sheep, chickens and traditional villages.
Some traditional village pics. These have no special features and just remind you that though more interesting than the motorway are no guarantee of cultural excitement.
The major excitement comes when after some rough patches around road works we get a very terrible smell of petrol. We get out to see which pipe or union it is pouring from, our fear enhanced by the fuel gauge moving visibly downwards as we climb a hill. We can find no flood of fuel. The under-bonnet seems dry bar a bit of oil from the rocker cover. We press on, once on the level the huge settles and the smell goes. But not the anxiety, never the anxiety (see original post on classic car touring).
We get to the Lagos Hotel Marina Rio with exactly 19 minutes left before our tests go out of time – the hotel receptions notes this (we were hoping she would just look at the date stamp, not the time stamp) and laughs with us at our gamesmanship.
We cruelly leave Hermann outdoors (gasp!) overlooking the marina where we last came with the BroadBlue catamaran in 2020. He’ll be fine, and anyway there’s nowhere else.